The Filter: Nov. 5, 2008... President Obama Edition

OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT AS RACIAL BARRIER FALLS(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United
States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American
politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief
executive. The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a
repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his
economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a
change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was
just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the
nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed
unthinkable just two years ago... To the very end, Mr. McCain’s campaign was eclipsed by an opponent who
was nothing short of a phenomenon, drawing huge crowds epitomized by
the tens of thousands of people who turned out to hear Mr. Obama’s
victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago. Mr. McCain also fought
the headwinds of a relentlessly hostile political environment, weighted
down with the baggage left to him by President Bush and an economic
collapse that took place in the middle of the general election campaign.

A NEW WORLD ORDER(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)Nov. 4, 2008, was the day when American politics shifted on its axis. The ascent of an African-American to the presidency — a victory by a
47-year-old man who was born when segregation was still the law of the
land across much of this nation — is a moment so powerful and so
obvious that its symbolism needs no commentary. But it was the reality of power, not the symbolism, that changed Tuesday night in ways more profound than meet the eye. The rout of the Republican Party, and the accompanying gains by
Democrats in Congress, mean that Barack Obama will assume office with
vastly more influence in the nation’s capital than most of his recent
predecessors have wielded. The only exceptions suggest the magnitude of the moment. Power flowed
in unprecedented ways to George W. Bush in the year after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks. It flowed likewise to Lyndon B. Johnson after his
landslide in 1964. Beyond those fleeting moments, every president for more than two
generations has confronted divided government or hobbling internal
divisions within his own party.

OBAMA'S TRANSCENDENCE BEYOND RACE(Ron Fournier, Associated Press)The elevation of Barack Obama to the White
House is a transcendent moment, for what this election says about a
nation where blacks were once considered property. And that might be the least of it. This
is a once-in-a-lifetime event. At odd intervals — 1800, 1860, 1932,
1980 — the nation reaches a "pivot point," an election that draws the
line between the past and the future. And 2008 appears to be just such
a line in the shifting sands of our convulsive times. Reagan-style conservative supremacy? Over. The era of baby boomer leadership? Waning. And
maybe, just maybe, something new has arrived: a post-partisan approach
to governing, founded on the Obama Coalition, fueled by young and
minority voters, powered by the 21st century technologies that helped
turn a first-term senator from Illinois into a historic lodestone. From
the beginning, Obama had his sights on something bigger than the "50
percent plus one" approach championed by Karl Rove. He wanted a larger
statement.

HARD CHOICES AND CHALLENGES FOLLOW TRIUMPH(Dan Balz, Washington Post)After a victory of historic significance, Barack Obama will inherit problems of historic proportions. Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt
was inaugurated at the depths of the Great Depression in 1933 has a new
president been confronted with the challenges Obama will face as he
starts his presidency. At home, Obama must revive an economy experiencing some of the worst
shocks in more than half a century. Abroad, he has pledged to end the
war in Iraq and defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He ran on a platform to change the country and its politics. Now he must begin to spell out exactly how. Obama's winning percentage appears likely to be the largest of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide and makes him the first since Jimmy Carter
in 1976 to garner more than 50.1 percent. Like Johnson, he will govern
with sizable congressional majorities... But with those advantages come hard choices. Among them will be deciding how much he owes his victory to a popular rejection of President Bush
and the Republicans and how much it represents an embrace of Democratic
governance. Interpreting his mandate will be only one of several
critical decisions Obama must make as he prepares to assume the
presidency. Others include transforming his campaign promises on taxes,
health care, energy and education into a set of legislative priorities
for his first two years in office.

NOW WHAT?(John Dickerson, Slate)Barack Obama has said he wants to change the political system. Now
that he is president-elect, we'll see what that actually means. As he
works to remove the troops from Iraq, reform the nation's health care
system, and promote American energy independence, we'll see how well he
keeps his promise to reach out to others with different ideas. He once
promised that negotiations about his health care plan would be shown
live on C-SPAN. Is he really going to be that transparent? It may take some time before we know these answers. But some
indications of Obama's new kind of politics could come before he starts
making policy decisions. In his acceptance speech, Obama plans to offer
some symbolic gestures, such as reaching out to Republicans and not
appearing overly celebratory. This is a good start, but there's more he
could do. Here are a few suggestions.

THE MOST UNLIKELY PRESIDENT(Ezra Klein, American Prospect)Barack Hussein Obama was, arguably, the country's most unlikely
candidate for highest office. He embodied, or at least invoked, much of
what America feared. His color recalled our racist past. His name was a
reminder of our anxious present. His spiritual mentor displayed a
streak of radical Afro-nationalism. He knew domestic terrorists and had
lived in predominantly Muslim countries. There was hardly a specter
lurking in the American subconscious that he did not call forth. And that was his great strength. He robbed fear of its ability to
work through quiet insinuation. He forced America to confront its own
subconscious. Obama actually is black. His middle name actually is
"Hussein." He actually does know William Ayers. He actually was married
by Jeremiah Wright. He actually had lived in Indonesia. These were not
smears, though they were often used as such. They were facts. And this
election was fundamentally about what happened when fear collided with
fact.

CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA(Ross Douthat, The Atlantic)Unlike previous Democratic nominees, Obama was operating in an
environment where his side had the upper hand on almost every issue,
and there was actually more risk than reward involved in straying too
far off the liberal reservation. And the campaign he ran reflected that reality, rather than living up to its initial promise to transcend the left-right divide. So
I was disappointed in Barack Obama, but I also realize that his
campaign wasn't addressed to me: It was addressed to the constituents
of a potential center-left majority, and that's the majority he won
tonight. Whether this majority holds together will depend on how he
governs, but for the moment he has achieved something that no
Democratic politician has achieved in a generation: He's carved out a
mandate to take America at least some distance in a leftward direction,
and he has left the conservative opposition demoralized, disorganized,
and arguably self-destructing. Obviously, this achievement was made
possible by the blunders of his predecessor, the floundering of the
McCain campaign, and the good fortune of running against the incumbent
party during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But
great politicians are almost always lucky politicians, and Obama's good
fortune does not diminish the magnitude of his triumph tonight, and the
credit that he and his campaign deserve for the race they've run.

HEAD-SPINNING STUFF(Gerard Baker, Times of London)The country regarded loftily by many Europeans as hopelessly racist and
irredeemably right wing has voted to be ruled by a black man, at the head of
a party committed to economic redistribution and a foreign policy rooted in
peaceful diplomatic engagement... The country faces challenges on a scale no incoming president has had to
tackle since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. The economy is in a
recession likely to be as deep as the deepest in the last 50 years.
Recently, wild financial market mayhem and unprecedented government remedies
have fostered doubt in the efficacy of America’s system of economic
organisation. The country’s standing in the world has been compromised by foreign policy
failures, the public relations disasters of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib,
and more recently a perceived lack of leadership in the global crisis. All the while these failings have taken place against a backdrop of steadily
mounting fear that the US may be eclipsed within a generation by the
emerging powers in Asia. Remedying any one of these ills would be a tall order for a new president.
Trying to cure them all at the same time looks positively Herculean.

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID--KINDA(Noam Scheiber, New Republic)It didn’t take long for the GOP to settle
on a narrative once the numbers started heading south last night: John
McCain was running even or slightly ahead of Obama until the economy
cratered in September. If not for the financial crisis, McCain would
have stood a pretty good chance of winning... [But] the economy is hardly an illegitimate issue, some arbitrary
external event that has no business deciding an election. A big chunk
of what you ‘re doing when you vote for president is choosing a manager
of the economy. Having said that, there’s no denying that the economic crisis
strongly affected the size of Obama’s victory. Over the last several
decades, the country has seen two swing groups move in opposite
directions: Working-class whites exiting the Democratic Party, and more
affluent, educated voters leaving the GOP. For either side, the key to
winning a presidential election has been to hold onto its own swing
voters while consolidating gains among the other guy’s. Thanks to the
economy, Barack Obama more than accomplished that last night.